How I Write Blogs - June 2024 Edition

I wrote about my blog writing methodology back in April 2021. My writing method has undergone a significant shift, so I thought about writing this update.

New blog topics are added to my note-taking app quite frequently now. Occasionally going through the list, I merge topics, change the order to prioritize certain ideas or purely drop some that seem not worth a write-up. Due to this, I have the liberty to work on blogs according to mood. Writing the last one was tiring, so I chose to work on an easy one, i.e. this blog now.

Topic decided, everything starts on Etherpad. Etherpad has this nice font and sync feature, which helps me write from any device of choice. Actual writing usually happens in the morning, right after I wake up. For most topics, I quickly jot down pointers and keep on expanding them over the course of multiple days at a leisurely pace. Though, sometimes it adds too many pieces to the puzzle and takes additional time to put everything in flow. New additions keep on happening along the way. Nowadays, pictures also dot my blog, which I rarely used to do earlier. I have come to believe in less usage of external links. These break the flow of reading. If someone is sufficiently motivated to learn more about something, finding useful sources isn’t hard.

As the first draft comes into being, I run it through LanguageTool for spell check and fixing grammatical issues. After that, for the first time, I read the complete write-up in one go for the formation of a coherent storyline, moving paragraphs around to form a structure, adding explainers wherever something new or unexplained is introduced, removing elaborate sentences and making amends wherever required. Another round of LanguageTool follows. All set now. I try to space out my final read before publishing, which helps find additional issues.

When everything is set, I do hugo to generate the site and rsync everything to the web server. A final git sync closes the publication part.

After a day or two, I come back to read the blog on the website. This entails another round of finding and fixing trivial mistakes. Post that, it’s set for good.

Nowadays, all posts are syndicated on Planet FSCI and Planet Debian, which has given it more visibility. As someone who’s into infrastructure and the Internet a lot, I do pay attention to logs on my server, but as a disconnected exercise to see if the blog is being read or not. More hits on the blog don’t translate to any gratification for me, at least from a writer’s point of view. Occasionally, people do mention my blog, which does flatter me. Four years and nearly a hundred posts later, I still wonder how I kept on writing for this long.